James Potter did not remember when or why he started smoking.
That's a lie.
James started smoking on Christmas Day, 1975. His dad had recently been diagnosed with a deadly disease, and was given eight months to live. He had run out of the house, without paying attention to where he was going. He had, inadvertently, bumped into a homeless man, smoking a cigarette. James knew that smoking wasn't something he should do and he knew that it was a hard habit to break once you picked it up. Sirius had been smoking since the summer before Fifth Year and James had learned from him that the effects could be calming or energizing. Ignoring the voice inside his head that told him it was a bad idea – he often did this – he impulsively – another thing he did quite often, acted impulsively and without thinking – asked the homeless man for a cigarette. The man had looked disgruntled until James – now that he had the idea in his head he wanted a goddamn cigarette – offered the man some of the left over Muggle money that he had needed when he and his parents had gone to the shops last week. The man looked shocked, before shrugging and offering James the entire, nearly new, pack. James had then asked the man for a light – he later went back to the Muggle shops and bought a lighter himself because even after learning a spell to light the cigarettes he felt so much more fulfilled using a lighter– and inhaled the smoke into his lungs. He coughed and spluttered and the homeless man had shot him a scathing look and rolled his eyes. After a few more drags, James got the hang of it and finished the cigarette quickly. He had one more, before hiding the pack in his left sock – had he really run out in his pyjamas? – and quickly making his way home. He hugged his dad and mum and was then forced into a two-hour long discussion detailing his dad's disease, how James would have to take care of his mum, etcetera. James stopped paying attention after a few minutes. It was the worst Christmas he had ever experienced.
Sirius had been smoking since the summer before Fifth Year; things had been rough and he knew it would piss off his mother, so he figured, why the hell not?
James wrote to Sirius over Christmas to ask how many packs of cigarettes Sirius brought with him to school and how long they lasted. He used his Muggle math skills – something his father had insisted on and oh, look, how did that cigarette get lit? and when did it end up held comfortably between his lips? – to figure out how many packs he would need to purchase before school to last him through the second half of the year based on how many he was already smoking a day – much more than he was willing to admit, thankyouverymuch. He checked to make sure that he had enough money on the last day before he was to return to Hogwarts – that way he wouldn't be tempted to break into his rations before school started – and made his way to the Muggle shops. As he paid, the worker behind the counter looked alarmed and slightly horrified at him, but he just shrugged, smiled charmingly and said "boarding school with minimal trips into town" – and ignored the fact that he knew this wouldn't even last him the second half of the year and he would have to send money to Sirius' guy to get more packs sent to him.
Now that James and Sirius were both smoking, it became much harder for the other two members of their tight-knit group to refrain from the occasional cigarette themselves. Peter gave in quickly.
James and Sirius had been bugging him for two weeks straight – just try it, they're fantastic – while Remus commented about "peer pressure" and "not being pressuring wankers". Peter finally gave in while they were sitting outside in the courtyard on a surprisingly warm spring day – if I try one, will you shut up and let me finish my essay? – and grabbed the cigarette that Sirius had been shoving under his nose for the last five minutes. Sirius and James both grinned, and James reached over to light the cigarette as Peter breathed in. He coughed slightly and Sirius snickered as Remus shot them all disapproving looks. Peter occasionally borrowed one off of James or Sirius when he was feeling particularly stressed after that, but never bought a pack himself. Usually it was just one here and one there around exams or after a particularly grueling lesson.
Remus never smoked.
He looked disdainfully on as Sirius and James smoked, and then convinced Peter to as well. He had a few Muggle relatives on his mum's side that smoked and the habit always put him off. He didn't like the smell of the smoke and he didn't like the way it made him cough and sputter - his aunt would unconsciously blow it in his face while talking to him and he could not stand it. He would rattle off facts about how it was unhealthy and dangerous, and how it was a horrible habit if you wanted to try to break it, but James and Sirius both steadily ignored him. When Sirius was feeling particularly moody, he would sometimes blow his smoke in Remus' face when Remus would protest his smoking at all, and that would be the last straw. They would ignore each other for the rest of the day, or more likely until dinner, before both apologizing.
The professors knew that several students smoked and they didn't approve.
James could feel the judgmental looks as he passed by certain teachers when he came back inside the castle after a quick smoke in a secluded corner of the courtyard. Sometimes he caught the looks they shared when they were walking together and passed him – a mix of pity and disapproval – and his head would hang shamefully. But then he would pick it back up as soon as they passed – so what if the teachers knew about his father's situation? he was not using this as a coping mechanism, nope he was not, no matter how many times Remus tried to explain that he was – because who gives a fuck what the teachers think of him? The only times it really stung was when McGonagall caught his eye in the hall – and that quick flash of pity and disapproval would be mixed with something else - or when Dumbledore would survey him with that look – that look – from the staff table at meals.
Younger students looked slightly in awe while older students shook their heads.
Sometimes, when he couldn't go out into the courtyard – just because it's past curfew it doesn't mean he doesn't need a cigarette – James would just crack a window in the Common Room and sit on the sill, letting the ashes of his cigarette fall from Gryffindor Tower. Sirius often joined him – that's what friends are for, prank together and get dirty looks from the rest of the students together – and that was when a lot of their more personal conversations happened. But the topics of discussion didn't take away from the looks of awe on the First and Second Years' faces – he was terrible role model, his parents would be so disappointed – the looks of interest that he saw the Third and Fourth Years shooting him – please, please don't ask where to get a pack while you're in school – and the looks of disgust that the Sixth, Seventh, and even his fellow Fifth Years regarded him with – fuck off, fuck off, fuck off, who are you to judge anyway? – ignoring them as well he could, talking with his best mate.
James was smoking a little over two packs a week by the summer before Sixth Year.
His dad was rapidly declining and it didn't look like he was going to make it the full eight months that James had been promised. James couldn't help it, every time his dad coughed, every time he thought he heard his mum crying – and both of those occurred so often, so much more often that James would have liked and could have dealt with – he would venture outside to the decrepit shed that held old broomsticks and several tools to maintain the garden and he would light up, taking long drags as he tried to calm down. And really, what was he expected to do? His dad was at death's doorstep and his mum wasn't taking it well – she wasn't eating or sleeping, she was becoming weak and frail and James could hear her crying so, so frequently – and he was left alone. Well, not alone. His dad pretended he was fine and his mum put on a brave front and he knew it was all for him. Sirius was there and he was very often able to cheer James up, but it never lasted. The other Marauders too, they visited and wrote and that helped. Peter could tell jokes and do impression that had James rolling on the floor in laughter and Remus always had another interesting story about his family, but the happiness was always fleeting. After all, this came about rather quickly, all things considered – and James was only sixteen, still a kid who was losing his parents faster than he could handle.
James' dad never found out.
At least, James hoped he didn't. He hoped his dad couldn't smell the smoke on him when James would lean in to kiss his check, hoped he didn't notice the bulge in James pocket where his pack of cigarettes rested safely. He hoped that his dad didn't see through his pathetic excuses to leave the room when he would have a coughing fit – I'll be right back, promise, I just have to use the loo really quick – and he would really go to have a quick smoke. He hoped that his mum never found out either, but he was nearly certain she did. She never caught him, but after his father's death – he was really smoking a lot after that, when did be reach a pack a day? He would have to cut back before returning to school – she would sometimes give him a look. It wasn't the same look that he received from teachers – thank Merlin, he didn't think he would be able to handle that look from his mother without bursting into tears and repenting for every bad thing he had done in his entire memory – but it was a look nonetheless and it managed to cut him deeply every time he saw it. By the time of her death – a few weeks into the start of Seventh Year, what a way to begin – he was praying to every deity, magical and not, that she didn't know. He knew that she probably did – he knew it but he denied, denied, denied that knowledge from surfacing, keeping it locked in the back of his mind – and tried to ignore the looks – fuck, those looks drove him insane, causing the guilt to eat him alive. He knew his mum hated the habit – even though she never said it outright he could see her face twist when they would pass people on the street that were smoking – and he knew she would be upset to find out he was smoking – smoking nearly a pack a day again, after her death; the guilt hit him full force every time he lit up a new cigarette but that just propelled him to smoke more, a horrible cycle that brought more guilt until he was finally able to tuck the guilt away in the back of his mind.
James knew he smelled like smoke.
He knew that the smell lingered in their dormitory, that it caught in the wind of the courtyard, that it followed him around as he walked from class to class. He could see the looks the other students shot him – mostly disgusted, mostly from Slytherins who didn't think that such an ugly Muggle habit was at all respectable – and he ignored that in the same way he ignored the looks from his teachers and the students in his own House. He fluctuated; sometimes he would hold his head high as the smoke trailed him, like it was some sort of badge of honor – who cares what people think, who needs their approval? – but other times he let the smell was over him as he walked and with it came the feelings of guilt and shame that ate away at him only when it was dark and he was buried in his covers and he couldn't escape those thoughts.
Lily Evans hated it.
Lily didn't just hate smoking, she absolutely loathed it. She thought it was a filthy, disgusting habit and she didn't know why anyone would pick it up. She saw Sirius and James in Fifth Year, smoking in plain sight in the courtyard, in the Common Room, wherever they damn well pleased to be quite honest, and it disgusted her. She brought it up, once, when she had a particularly nasty row with James, calling him several horrible names – she could see a quick change in his expression and she ignored it – and telling him how utterly stupid he was for picking up such a horrid habit. Sixth Year she loathed it just as much, making comments loudly to her friends and rolling her eyes when she saw the pair pulling out their lighters. By Seventh Year, she clung to that disgust, and when James asked her to go with him to Hogsmeade the following weekend, she challenged him instead of outright saying no. She told him that if he quit smoking (the trial period being from then until Hogsmeade) that she would go with him. Obviously it wouldn't work – she was observant and she knew roughly how many cigarettes he was having a day – and that gave her more time to dwell on and address her quickly changing feelings while not shooting James down.
James was at an impasse.
He needed his cigarettes – needed them like the air he breathed, like the blood running through his veins – but he thought that maybe, just maybe, getting Lily to agree to go with him to Hogsmeade could be the start of something he had been waiting years for.
A/N: I literally do not know what happened, I just wanted to write out my James as a smoker headcanon, I did not intend for it to do the way that it did. I like the ending though even though the middle bits were like, slightly angsty and depressing? Anyway, I'm planning to write a sequel one shot to this, which will hopefully be up by the end of the week. It will also be significantly cheerier (thought still angsty - sorry, I'm in a mood). Um. Reviews are lovely and so are favorite and all that stuff. If anyone finds any errors, feel free to let me know, because I didn't have a beta for this. Thank for reading, loves!